Researchers: prosecutors and defense describe why judges depart from guidelines in assault-2 and aggravated-robbery cases

Practitioners’ accounts of how cases are charged and processed help explain why judges frequently depart from Minnesota’s sentencing guidelines, a Robina Institute researcher told the Sentencing Guidelines Commission on Thursday.

Dr. Julia Laskarinsky, who conducted hour‑long interviews with prosecutors, defense lawyers and dispositional advisers across Minnesota, said the interviews identified recurring themes behind departures in two high‑departure offenses: second‑degree assault and aggravated robbery. She presented themes and policy considerations intended to inform the commission’s comprehensive review and possible re‑ranking of offense groups.

Dr. Laskarinsky said departures for assault‑2 cases are driven in large part by the statute’s breadth: the offense can cover both serious shootings and less injurious conduct such as non‑lethal threats. "In over half of the cases, individuals are given probation despite the mandatory minimum for a prison sentence," she said, noting that first‑time offenders, young age, low criminal history and early engagement with treatment were frequently cited by defense lawyers as reasons to support non‑custodial outcomes.

For aggravated robbery, Dr. Laskarinsky said the offense also sweeps a wide range of conduct — from a violent theft involving a gun to a fight among acquaintances that produces minimal injury — and that prosecutors and public defenders described higher durational departure rates (more than one‑third of imprisoned robbery defendants receive prison terms shorter than the guideline recommendation). Interviewees identified victim noncooperation (especially where illicit activity is involved), lack of a recovered weapon and heavy caseload pressure as frequent drivers of negotiated dispositional outcomes or downward departures.

Both prosecutors and defense attorneys told researchers that statutory mandatory minimums can be a practical problem: mandatory penalties are sometimes viewed as not calibrated to the wide variety of conduct captured by the statutes, producing pressure to either amend charges or seek departures. Dr. Laskarinsky said many interviewees favored distinguishing types of assault‑2 offenses (for example, fear‑only offenses versus those causing bodily harm), but that the existence of mandatory minimums complicated how practitioners and judges treat the current ranking.

Members of the commission asked about quantitative corroboration of the interview themes. Director Reitz and staff noted they maintain sentencing‑data fields that record reasons judges state at departure; staff said they could supply frequency reports showing departure reasons when judges specify them, with the caveat that judges and lawyers often list multiple reasons and the data do not always indicate the relative importance of each reason.

Why it matters: The presentation tied observed sentencing practice (high departure rates for particular offenses) to prosecutorial, courtroom and defendant characteristics that may be amenable to policy change — for example, reclassification of offense elements, targeted legislative fixes, or guideline modifiers that explicitly capture commonly invoked mitigating factors.

Next steps: Dr. Laskarinsky said she will continue analysis of interviews for several other offense types (criminal vehicular homicide, felony DWI, and failure to register) and can provide commissioners with more detailed queries and cross‑tabulations on request.